The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell [49]
She might have been addressing a child. Since she herself had never given birth – had, I remembered, expressed active objection to being burdened with offspring – Moreland may to some extent have occupied a child’s role in her eyes; possibly even in her needs, something she had sought in Maclintick and never found. Moreland, so far as it went, seemed to accept this status, receiving the complaint with a laugh, though no denial of its justice.
“I must have dropped it there before fire-watching,” he said. “How bored one gets on those nights. It’s almost worse if there isn’t a raid. I began to plan a work, last time, called The Fire-watcher’s March, drums, you know, perhaps triangle and oboe. I was feeling particularly fed up that night, not just displeased with the war, or certain social or political conditions from which one suffers, but tired of the whole thing. That is one of the conceptions most difficult for stupid people to grasp. They always suppose some ponderable alteration will make the human condition more bearable. The only hope of survival is the realisation that no such thing could possibly happen.”
“Never mind what goes through your head when you’re fire-watching, Moreland,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “You order some dinner. We don’t want to starve to death while you hold forth. It won’t be much when it comes, if I’m any prophet.”
These words were another reminder of going out with Moreland and Matilda, though Matilda’s remonstrance would have been less downright. The plea for food was reasonable enough. We got hold of a waiter. There was the usual business of Moreland being unable to decide, even from the limited choice available, what he wanted to eat. In due course dinner arrived. Moreland, now back on his accustomed form, discoursed about his work and people we knew. Mrs. Maclintick, grumbling about domestic difficulties, showed herself in general amenable. The evening was turning out a success. One change, however, was to be noticed in Moreland’s talk. When he dwelt on the immediate past, it was as if all that had become very distant, no longer the matter of a year or two before. For him, it was clear, a veil, a thick curtain, had fallen between “now” and “before the war.” He would suddenly become quite worked up about people we had known, parties we had been to, subjects for amusement we had experienced together, laughing at moments so violently that tears ran down his cheeks. One felt he was fairly near to other, deeper emotions, that the strength of his feelings was due to something in addition to a taste for mulling over moments in retrospect enjoyable or grotesque.
“You must admit funny things did happen in the old days,” he said. “Maclintick’s story about Dr. Trelawney and the red-haired succubus that could only talk Hebrew.”
“Oh, don’t go on about the old days so,” said Mrs. Maclintick. “You make me feel a hundred. Try and live in the present for a change. For instance, it might interest you to know that a one-time girl friend of yours is about to sit down at a table over there.”
We looked in the direction she had indicated by jerking her head. It was perfectly true. Priscilla Lovell and an officer in battle-dress were being shown to a table not far from our own. The officer was Odo Stevens. For a moment they were occupied with a waiter, so that a brief suspension of time was offered to consider how best to deal with this encounter, superlatively embarrassing, certainly soon unavoidable. At first it struck me as a piece of quite undeserved, almost incredible ill chance that they should turn up like this; but, on consideration, especially in the light of what Lovell himself had told me, there was nothing specially odd about it. Probably Stevens was on leave. This was an obvious enough place to dine, though certainly not one to choose if you wanted to be discreet.
“Adulterers are always asking the courts for discretion,” Peter